The Man Behind The Mask. Barbara Hannay

to, Nora had opened her eyes to find this man bent over her. His expression was intense, and he was breathtakingly handsome. Dark, thick hair was curling wetly around perfect features—a straight nose; whisker-roughened cheeks; a faintly cleft chin; firm, sensuous lips.

      A raindrop had slid with exquisite slowness down his temple, over the high ridge of his cheekbone, onto his lip.

      And then, in slow motion, it had fallen from his lip to hers.

      Perhaps it was the knock on the head that had made the moment feel suspended, made the raindrop feel as if it sizzled in the chill of the night. Made her reach out with the tip of her tongue and taste that tiny pearl of water.

      Perhaps it was the knock on the head that made her feel like a princess coming awake to find the prince leaning over her.

      Through it all, Nora had been caught hard by eyes that mesmerized: velvet brown suede flecked with gold, a light in them that was mostly solid strength, with just the faintest shadow of something else.

      Something she of all people should know.

      Woozily, she had reached out and let the palm of her hand caress his bristly cheek, to touch that common ground she recognized between them.

      He had gone very still under her touch, but he did not move away from it. She had felt a lovely sense of safety, that this was someone she could rely on.

      But then the wooziness was gone, just like that, and she’d remembered she was in her paddock. And that she was alone out there with a man who had no business being on her property at this time of the night.

      Nora’s instincts when it came to animals were beyond good. Some people, including her ex-fiancé, Dr. Vance Height, whom she had met while working as an assistant in his veterinary practice, were spooked by what she could accomplish with sheer intuition.

      But Vance was a reminder that Nora’s good instincts did not extend to men. Or much else about life. With tonight being an unsettling exception, her perception was fabulous when it came to dealing with hurt, frightened animals.

      Or writing her quirky, off-beat column Ask Rover, a column she had never admitted she was behind, because she had come across Vance reading it in her early days at his office, and he had been terribly scornful of it.

      The intuition was not so good at helping her stretch her modest income from the column to support both the animal shelter and Luke. Thankfully, as the shelter became more established it was starting to receive financial support from the community of Hansen.

      Her intuition was also not proving the least helpful at dealing with a now fifteen-year-old nephew who seemed intent on visiting his hurt and anger over the death of his mother on the whole world.

      Feeling foolish now for that vulnerable moment when she had reached up and let her hand scrape the seductive whiskery roughness of the stranger’s cheek, and more foolish for allowing herself to be carried across her yard by a perfect stranger, Nora shook off Luke’s arm. She was supposed to be protecting him, not the other way around.

      She turned and faced the man, folding her arms over her chest.

      She had been, she was certain, mistaken that they shared anything in common. Looking at him from this angle, she found he looked hard and cold, and she had, as was her unfortunate habit, given her trust too soon.

      “Where did he come from?” Luke asked in a suspicious undertone.

      For all she knew he could be an ax murderer! Anyone could say they were an architect! She ran an animal rescue center. Anyone could say they had brought a cat.

      She knew he wasn’t a cat person, one likely to be ruled by the kind of sentiment that would drive him out on a night like this for the well-being of a cat.

      But behind the man, she suddenly became aware of an old woman in a ghastly pink outfit. As Nora watched, the woman gave a grunt of exertion and freed a large container from the backseat of a car that was as gray as the night and sleek with sporty expense. The man turned to her, stepped back and took a large carpet bag from her.

      Nora registered two things at once: how protective he seemed of that tiny, frail woman, and that there was indeed a cat! Its head was sticking out of a kind of window in the side of the carrier. One didn’t have to have any psychic ability at all to know the cat did not have now, and probably never had had, a pleasing personality.

      “I’m Brendan Grant,” he said.

      The name seemed Scottish to Nora, and with the rain plastering his hair to his head, running unchecked down the formidable, handsome lines of his face, it was just a little too easy to picture him as a Scottish warrior. Strong. Imperious to the weather.

      Determined to get his own way.

      What was his own way?

      “And this is my grandmother, Deedee, and her cat, Charlie.” The faint hiss of angry energy seemed to intensify around him. His mouth had become a hard line. He was watching Nora closely for her reaction.

      “I’m sorry?” she said. What on earth was he doing here at this time of the night with his grandmother and her cat?

      Still, whatever it was, it did dilute some of the threat she felt. Though not an expert, she was still fairly certain architect ax murderers did not travel with an entourage that included grandmothers and cats.

      His voice calm and ice-edged, he said, “Deedee has been made certain promises concerning Charlie. And she has paid in advance.”

      Nora didn’t have a clue what he meant. But she did realize the threat she felt was not of the ax-murderer variety.

      It was of the raindrop-falling-from-lips variety. She was aware her head hurt, but was not at all sure this feeling of being caught off balance was caused by the knock to her head.

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said firmly.

      She became aware that something rippled through Luke. She felt more than saw his discomfort. She cast her nephew a glance out of the corner of her eye.

      Uh-oh.

      “Look,” the man said quietly, the commanding tone of his voice drawing her attention firmly back to him. “You may be able to pull the wool over the eyes of an old woman, but I’m here to look after her interests. And you should know that if you’ve swindled her, you can kiss the support of the Hansen Community Betterment Committee good-bye.”

      Kiss the support of the Hansen Community Betterment Committee good-bye? Nora couldn’t let her panic show.

      “Swindled your grandmother?” she asked instead. Below the panic, she could feel the insult of it! His caustic remarks about her energy and her being a healer were beginning to make an awful kind of sense.

      “I wouldn’t be surprised if the police became involved,” Brendan said, the quiet in his voice making it all the more threatening.

CHAPTER FOUR

      THE POLICE? NORA felt a sense of panic, as if her world were tilting.

      Still, she could not cave before him. She was about to insist that he was the one trespassing on private property, except that at the mention of the police, she realized she wasn’t the only one panicking.

      Nora saw Luke go rigid.

      There’d been an unfortunate incident at school involving the police way too recently.

      Luke claimed to have borrowed a bicycle. Apparently without the full understanding of the bicycle’s owner, which was why the police had become involved. Luke had talked to the other boy, and the whole thing, thankfully, had blown over.

      Now her nephew met her eyes, pleading, and then ducked his head, drawing a pattern in the wet ground with his bare toe.

      Nora glanced back at Brendan Grant